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Nobody would ever go on record saying that parenting is easy (no one who knows anything, at least). But just because it’s a tough job shouldn’t give parents license to do whatever they want in the name of raising their kids. Key word being “shouldn’t” because surprise, surprise…
Somebody didn’t have that talk with these parents, and now their kids have some pretty insane stories to share about what didn’t (or did) go down during their childhoods.
You’ll be so thankful after reading this that you’ll want to call your parents immediately.
Let’s go!
1. heyitsaubrey’s parents made her very flexible… for some reason…
“I don’t have very many memories of my childhood, or really anything in the last 25 years. But I do remember when we would go in time out, we had to bend our knees and fold our arms behind our backs while staring at the wall. We had to stand motionless and silent for 30 minutes. If we moved or swayed, we got another 30 minutes. This would go on for hours sometimes. My brothers and I would pull muscles and pass out sometimes.”
“Also while we were in the shower our parents would search our rooms. They did this every day and if they found anything they didn’t like they’d make us jump out of the shower, still dripping wet and naked, and come clean up or explain whatever they found.”
“And we were always “grounded” but they would never tell us why. So, since we were already grounded, they would just take away our birthdays or do timeout for punishment. I have only celebrated my birthday twice in my life, and both times my mom shut it down within 10 minutes.
Edit;TLDR; leg day, all day. I can do squats for hours.”
2. Beatboxboomer’s parents hoarded. So much.
“They kept everything. EVERYTHING.
The moment I walked into my friend’s house and realized you’re NOT suppose to have stuff lining the walls was ridiculous.”
3. blueeyesredlipstick’s mom knew way too much about her kids’ love lives.
“My mom was always very invested in our romantic lives, partly because that was an area where we didn’t stack up well as compared to our cousins. The most insane manifestation of this was when I agreed to go out on a date with a guy, only to find out before the date that he was a sexual predator who’d been fired/arrested after he preyed on four separate freshmen at the school where he taught.”
“Mom flipped out trying to convince me not to cancel the date. “He might have grown out of it! You don’t know if you don’t give him a chance!”
“Thankfully, my dad was on my side and I cancelled the date. But Mom sulked the entire rest of the night and demanded I log her in to my Facebook account so she could scroll through my friends list so that she could see which of my male friends were straight and single so that she could push me towards them instead.”
4. PriestsOfHiroshima’s mom had a weird way of coping with divorce.
“When my mother “left” my dad, she pitched a tent in my walk-in closet. I was 7 or 8 and she lived in my fucking closet for months before she got her own place. I still remember her reading her Joyce Meyer books by lamplight.”
5. AnonyMissMe’s family may have been werewolves.
“We lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere (at least 35mins to the nearest grocery store). I am not sure how it started, because I was a kid, but any time our puppy dog howled, we would all howl. To the point that it was a deafening sound and would kind of make your ears rattle.”
“His name was Duke. I would occasionally howl first because then he would follow and then so would my mother, father, and two older brothers. I thought it was awesome and it felt invigorating to do. I now realize this is odd.”
6. IndianaRedneck’s babysitter was super random.
“I was seven and my brother was five (during the early 80s). We were told to wait in the school parking lot for the babysitter to pick us up. Thing is, we never met her before and had no idea what she looked like. So we waited until a woman pulled up with a picture of us in her hand. She showed us the picture and asked if it was us. We said it was and she told us she’s our babysitter. We got in the car without thinking twice. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
7. jadecourt’s dad was not a problem solver.
“On the day my dad decided to buy our family’s first PC, he loaded me and my younger sisters into the back of our little two door Honda and drove the 20 minutes to the store.”
“After purchasing the computer, my dad realize there wasn’t enough room in our tiny car for three children, car seats, and the giant ass 1997 computer. So he LEFT US at the store, apparently thinking that if he bought us all candy bars, that’d be enough to keep a 5, 3, and 2 year old occupied and out of trouble. He took the new computer home and then turned around to come back and get us, having left us alone for easily 40 minutes”
8. ilbatboy’s parents somehow loved knives more than their kid.
“My parents visited underground Atlanta back in the early 90’s. Not the safest place. Anyways, my brother was a baby and crawled under a bench they were sitting on. He pulled out an umbrella bag with a very sinister knife inside. My parents don’t report the knife or anything, but instead KEEP it and it becomes a staple knife in our kitchen. So yea, pretty sure my parents used a murder weapon to cut the crust off our pb&js.”
9. LyannasLament’s god parents were straight out of the movie Matilda.
“My god brothers parents used to lock us in his room for hours to days at a time. His little brothers learned to pee in the thrash can instead of in the floor when we couldn’t get them out. We eventually learned how to unlock and relock the hatch from inside the room so that the four of us could get out for pee breaks, and for snacks when we were feeling really ballsy.”
“I didn’t realize how abnormal this was until I was watching a news story in the work break room with a bunch of coworkers about a “neglected” child being removed from an unfit home. My initial response was “that’s nothing!” As I launched into what I just wrote above. I looked around waiting for everyone else’s stories, but instead they all just stared at me… ”
“Edit: quite a few people have been very kind and offered sound advice to me. Therapy is definitely worth its weight in gold.
Edit 2: People keep asking; God brother is the son of one of your God parent, or so I was taught when I was growing up.”
10. Kawaii_Kajira’s dad pimped his wife out.
“My brother and I would be locked in our room for hours at a time and told to be absolutely silent. Went on for a few years.”
“One morning I woke up super early, earlier than normal, and was hungry. So I went to ask my mom for oatmeal. I open the bedroom door, and my mom is rubbing the back of a shirtless, sleeping man who is NOT my dad. Mom panics, jumps out of bed and gently pushes me out of the room. I kinda stand in the kitchen confused, when my dad comes in from another part of the house and asks wtf I’m doing, and sends me back to my room.”
“They finally divorced a couple years ago, and my mom confided that my dad made her prostitute herself to pay the bills for a while when we were kids. A lot of memories made sense after that.”
11. Blazeosaurus’s mom likely ended up in jail.
“Let homeless punk rockers live with us. Several. And some of them slept in our beds with us, with her permission. Two of two of my sisters were teen moms.”
12. gentlybeepingheart’s mom need to chill the f**k out!
“My mom is very controlling. She would make me turn my diary over to make sure I wasn’t writing anything she didn’t approve of. So I saved up enough money by skipping school lunch and bought a secret diary at the book fair.”
“I came home to her sitting on my bed and yelled at me for writing “mom is a JERK” or something like that. She would have grounded me, but I wasn’t allowed out of the house without her escorting me until age 16. She then wondered why I had no friends.”
“I was allowed only 30 minutes on the computer in the computer room and I would have to record which websites I went on and what usernames and passwords I used. She would use the password book to go on the websites and look at who I was talking to.”
“I also just kind of accepted that it was normal for parents to charge rent when you turned 18 and only allow you to eat one meal a day (dinner) and have to pay for the others yourself.”
“edit: the rent thing doesn’t bother me as much. It started out at $500 a month and went up every year so now I’m at $700 a month. That’s pretty normal rent around where I live, and I don’t have to pay for heat/electricity/internet. I’m trying to move out but I also have to pay for college out of pocket and it adds up. :(“
13. PM_ME_YOUR_FOOD_’s mom needlessly starved them.
“Kinda relevant, but I’m still gonna post this.
When I was in 6th grade (I think) my mom decided we needed to understand what it was like for people in third world countries. We ate oatmeal for breakfast, beans and rice for lunch, could have one fruit for a snack, and beans and rice plus some romane lettuce for dinner. All of this for a month, and we were only allowed 3 cheat meals.”
“In high school looking back I just thought she was batshit nuts. But once I started having bills and such of my own it occurred to me, my parents were just that broke. They just didn’t want us to think of it that way. Damn do I love those two people.
Edit: you fuckers saying my name is relevant, I wish I would have noticed first dammit”
14. Aware_City’s mom went nuts with the shears.
“Mom got mad at my sister for missing curfew and shaved her head as punishment.”
15. AvatarofBro’s brother made the family unbalanced.
“I have a brother with disabilities. He’s relatively low-functioning and requires regular attention, both inside the home and out. I love him to death, but it made for a pretty untraditional childhood.”
“I didn’t realize until my late teenage years that other families were…happy. And relaxed. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t have their problems. Just that they weren’t constantly preoccupied by one family member who requires more care and attention than others. At all times.”
“To be clear, my brother is a wonderful person. I cherish every moment that I get to spend with him now. But, at the same time, I spent a disproportionate amount of my childhood in waiting rooms while he went to various therapies. And I spent very little time with my parents growing up, because all of their attention was focused on my brother. I was an afterthought, because I was lucky enough to be an afterthought and still function.”
I need to go take a shower, and also I might be scarred for life now.
Thanks reddit!
